Losing Direction
by Eliza4892
Summary: JackSawyerClaire. He left, and they don't even care enough to pick up the goddamn phone.


Two months of trying to forget, of getting as far away from them, from her, as possible, of long nights spent in cold, empty beds in motels that seemed to exist solely for bikers or businessmen carrying on extramarital affairs, and it all came down to this. Fingers moving over perfectly printed numbers, as good as new from lack of use, dialing a number his mind no longer remembered yet his hands seemed to, and then the wait.

Four long rings, free hand clenched into a fist, blunt nails digging into once perfect skin (doctor's hands, or they were, but that was years ago, and even Sawyer doesn't call him Doc anymore, which means more than Sawyer probably intended), and then a harsh beep. There's no message, not even a warning, just the automated bleep. Jack doesn't bother to leave a message, just hangs up. He contemplates that maybe he just dialed the wrong number, but he knows he's just lying to himself now.

He left, and they don't even care enough to pick up the goddamn phone.

---

"_What are you doing?" Claire came home early, her shifts as a waitress unpredictable now that she's been taking on as many as they'll let her. He should've known not to risk it. "You're packing?"_

"_Yes," He replies, short with her, hoping she'll see he's made up his mind, just leave him to it. As if things were ever that clean, that free of complications._

"_Where are you going?" She stands in the doorway, holding onto the doorframe like it's the only thing that's still holding her up._

_He zips the suitcase up, though he's not through packing. He'll leave things behind just as he's leaving them behind. He doesn't answer her either, just brushes past her, and though she doesn't try to stop him she still calls his name, following him down the stairs._

_That's when Sawyer gets involved. He doesn't even need to be told what's going on, all it takes is that note of hurt, of fear, in Claire's voice and Sawyer's got his arm in a vice grip, and Jack decides then and there that if he has to he'll knock Sawyer out._

"_Where the hell do you think you're going?" Sawyer asks, and he's in his face, far more demanding than Claire, but then he's also more intimidating than she is, and he knows it. But Jack isn't scared of him._

"_I'm done," is all he says, giving no reasons. He's done with the whole thing. It's too complicated; it would be so much easier if it were just them and him, instead of all three of them together. _

_This time, when Jack tries to pull away, Sawyer lets him go._

---

He can't just let things alone. Not after he makes that phone call. He's had too much to drink, and he's been thinking about them for too long. He's sick and tired, and now that he's finally gotten away from them, now that he's on his own, he finds that he misses them too much to not want to know how they are. If they've moved on, truly.

It's why he's standing outside the door of a house he used to live in, hesitating to knock because there's really no turning back once he does. He could still get in his car and drive off, go to Vegas, or to Canada, anywhere that doesn't involve air travel, but once his fist hits that door it's all over. Because he knows curiosity will get the better of one of them, and even if they don't want to see him, someone will open up.

If they have moved on though, if they don't want him there, if they're just fine on their own, he'll go without a fight. He'll say his goodbyes. There's no fight left in him, and this is technically his doing after all. He left. He walked out on them. He said he was done.

He just needs to see for himself how they are.

---

_He spends that first night that he leaves in the bed of some woman he picks up at the bar. She reminds him of Shannon, tall and blonde, in need of a serious attitude adjustment at first glance, but at the same time there's a softer side to her, one that he won't get to experience because he won't stick around long enough for that. _

_Her long legs tangle with his among satin sheets (and he knew she'd be the time to have satin sheets, but he thinks they're kind of defeating the purpose, because it's kind of hard to fuck when you're practically sliding off the bed), and when he kisses her he's too rough, too forceful, but she doesn't seem to mind, and he can't bring himself to care. _

_He stays there, in this woman's bed, for most of the night. It's not typical one-night stand behavior, and it's not like he feels the need to be near her. It's more that he doesn't have anywhere else to be. Nowhere else to go, and he doesn't feel like checking into a hotel at two in the morning. So he stays, and doesn't sleep, and if she notices his presence she doesn't say anything._

_Jack gets up twenty minutes before her alarm clock is set to go off, finding his clothes as soundlessly as possible, but she still wakes up, like her internal alarm had already gone off, and when he looks up from putting on his shoes he finds her looking at him, rolled over onto her side. _

"_You're a wanderer aren't you?" She asks, running a hand through her straight, messy hair. _

_He frowned, confused. "What?"_

"_People don't spend the night in bed with someone, only to get up in the morning without so much as a goodbye and leave, unless they don't have anywhere else to go." He dropped his eyes, and she nodded her head once, knowing in an instant that she was right. "You just look a little lost is all."_

_Jack was quiet for a long moment, then, "It wouldn't be the first time."_

_She didn't say anything after that, just lay back down and closed her eyes, as if she knew enough to leave him alone. He was grateful for it, and after another minute or two he was leaving her apartment._

_He never knew her name._

---

He does knock, and after the second one he hears footsteps on the carpet. A lock is undone, and he sees the doorknob turn almost in slow motion, and then he's face to face with Claire. Her hair is wet, and she's in little more than nightclothes, like she just came from the shower, ready for bed.

She squints at him, like she isn't sure that she's really seeing him. "Jack?" He nods, though it's not like he needs to clarify. He's standing right there. "It's after midnight."

"I know." He replies, without a hint of remorse. "You weren't asleep."

"No, I wasn't. Sawyer is, and you'd be better off not waking him up." She tells him, and her voice is firmer than it usually is, dryer too. She doesn't sound like Claire he used to know, but he thinks maybe it's the late hour.

"I tried calling…" he wants to say more, it's the reason that he's here in the first place, but he can't.

"Yeah, I know." She says, a silent acknowledgement that he was right and they were ignoring him. "Why? Why are you here?"

He tries several times to get the words past his lips, but he finds he doesn't actually know why. Is it because he misses them, because he's just lonely, or is it because he wants to know if they've moved on without him. If he really is that expendable. He settles on: "Because I needed to see you."

"But you left." It would figure that she would throw that back in his face. Claire has abandonment problems, even though she'll deny it. "You wanted out, not us. So what right do you have to come back?"

If someone had asked a year ago if he could see himself standing here, being berated by the one person who was the perpetual sweetheart, the girl who got along with everyone, his half-sister even, he wouldn't have believed them. It's what made it hurt all the more. The fear he'd last heard in her voice was replaced with anger, a testament to what she felt towards him. "Are you going to let me in?"

"Answer me," she spats, her eyes glassy in the darkness.

"I don't know, I just…" he starts off strong, but he can't finish, not with the way she's looking at him. So he looks away, towards some distant spot in the bushes beside the house, as he tells her, "I missed you."

"Yeah, you missed us. How very nice for you." Claire shakes her head. "What about us? You think it was fun for us having you walk out like that. No phone number, no way of contacting you, not knowing if you were in the country, or even if you were still fucking alive." He's never quite gotten used to her saying that word, it seems out of character. Inside he can hear a door open, but she pays it no mind. "What about us?"

"I'm…I'm sorry, okay. You have no idea how sorry I am, but I had to. I had to leave."

Her eyes narrow, but then she breathes in deeply, he can see the heavy rise and fall of her chest and she relaxes ever so slightly. "I should slam this door in your face, and I would if you weren't the last bit of family I've got. But you are, and I know what it's like to have family shut you out."

She steps to the side, and he walks through the door, and back into his old life.

---

_Days of driving northeast, and it's not until day three that Jack realizes he's subconsciously had a destination in mind all this time. He's driving to Iowa. He's driving to Kate. Because of all of them she's the one who owes him the most. _

_He knows there's hardly a chance he'll find her. She may have been born in the state but home was always a sore subject, and so he doubts she's there. But he doesn't have anywhere else to start. He knows she isn't in LA, he's been there and done that and came up empty, and several phone calls, including an extrodarinarily awkward conversation with her mother, tells him that she is also not here. And he is. It's an afterthought that maybe he should've made those calls before he drove all this way._

_Jack finds his way into a bar, and then he finds his way into bed with the bartender (who as it turns out is a temp) and it's basically a repeat of the first time he did this, except with her things are a bit more complicated because he tries to leave in the middle of the night, and stumbling out into the hallway he discovers that she has a kid. A six year old little girl who does not take kindly to strangers in her house._

_She yells for her mother, and the woman is out of the bedroom he just left in seconds. He can see the tenseness fade from her body when she sees it's just him, and she calms her daughter accordingly. She strokes her daughter's hair, instructs him to wait there, and tucks the little girl back into bed._

_When she comes back out, there's a soft smile on her face as she says, "I'm sorry about that."_

"_It's fine." He replies, finding that, though this should be uncomfortable, it's not. "Does that happen a lot?" He doesn't mean does she have strange men in the house a lot. He means does she have unwanted strange men in the house, because the way the woman bolted into the hallway makes him think that it's possible. Either way, something's up, because she drops her head, and won't look at him. "Where's her father?"_

_He doesn't know why he asks. Maybe he's just making sure he isn't helping her cheat. He's never liked cheaters, even before Sarah. "I don't know," she replies, a tinge of regret in her voice. "I sent him to jail; I don't know where the hell he went from there." She's silent for a moment. "I wouldn't though, if I could do it all over again. He fucked me over miserably, but I still loved him, and he was still the closest thing to home I've felt in the past fifteen years."_

_There's no reason for her to tell him all this, but she is, and he's listening. He knows that sometimes you just need to get things off your chest, even to a complete stranger. Even better so in many cases._

"_Is that why you're here? Are you trying to get away from something?" _

_Jack locks eyes with her, and it's almost like she's looking through him. "Yeah."_

_She nods. "Look I don't know you all that well, but I do know what regret feels like. You shouldn't run. You should go back before you can't anymore. Otherwise they'll just move on without you."_

_He ducks his head, a smile tugging at his thin lips, and turns to leave. He's out the door, but not before he can hear her mumbled, "Good luck"._

---

"I don't think Sawyer's going to be so welcoming you know."

He looks up from the spot on the table that his eyes have been transfixed on for the past five minutes or so. It's really hard to look someone in the eye when you've messed up their life, and the family thing just adds to it. He always had a hard time looking his father in the eye after that meeting where he turned him in. The handful of times he saw him afterwards that is. "I heard someone walking around upstairs. You think that was him?"

Jack feels Claire's eyes on him from across the kitchen. "Well it wasn't Aaron."

"How is he?" Jack asks, elaborating quickly, "Aaron I mean. How is he?"

"He's fine. I signed him up for school next year. We went with Park Dale." She pours herself a cup of the coffee she's been waiting on for the past few minutes, and then sits down opposite him. "So where've you been?"

"Around," he answers, intentionally vague.

"Is that all I'm going to get?" Claire asks. The forcefulness in her voice seems to have calmed in the past few minutes. When she looks at him he doesn't get the feeling that the only thing she feels for him is hatred and betrayal. He doesn't say yes, but he doesn't add anything either. He doesn't have the chance to, because they both hear the bang from upstairs, like something hit the wall or a surface equally as hard, and Claire shakes her head before getting up. "I'll be back."

He hears her footsteps on the stairs, and then he hears her open one of the doors upstairs, closing it behind her. Then the yelling starts. He can't hear exactly what's being said, all he can hear is various curses being thrown around, most of them probably aimed at him, and something else hits the wall, not as loud as before, although this time he's fairly sure it's a body. Probably Sawyer. He's seen Claire angry more than a few times, and he's been backed into a corner, literally, by her more than once. He's got the feeling that that's exactly what just happened upstairs. Crystal clear, he can hear her say "enough!" so loud that if Aaron was asleep before, he isn't anymore. Then they fall silent, which is wholly uncharacteristic for Sawyer, and he thinks only Claire could shut him up.

Not a minute later she comes back down, and he can hear Sawyer following her, grumbling the whole way. This would probably go a lot better if it wasn't nearing three in the morning now.

Claire appears first, gives him a look that tells him, without words, to behave, and then she sits back down with her coffee. Jack stands up as soon as Sawyer enters, and there's a moment where they face off, and Claire gets this look like she's sure she's going to have to send them to opposite corners.

Neither of them wants to say the first word. It's too much like giving in. He knows Sawyer would probably like nothing more to fight it out, all the anger he feels, and hell he wouldn't much mind it either, but Claire has pretty much put an end to that before it even began. So now they have to use their words, and that's something that Sawyer has never been much for, and standing here right now Jack's tongue feels heavy in his mouth, and he doubts he's going to be much better at it than the other man.

"Are you back?" Sawyer asks, with his jaw set. He doesn't mean the obvious, since he isn't blind, and he can damn well see Jack is standing right there, which would mean he's back. What Sawyer means is he back in this eternally fucked up relationship they've got going, this thing with the three of them that worked until a few months ago when Jack started to over-think everything (and thinking really is overrated), or is he just here to catch up, only to leave in a few days. Is this only temporary.

"Yeah, I am."

Sawyer nods, comes over to him, real close, and in a low voice tells him, "You ever pull this shit again, don't even think about coming back." His hand lingers on Jack's arm a moment longer, and there's that same heat, that same tension that Jack had become accustomed to. It lets him know that just maybe things are okay, they did miss him, they weren't fine, and it reminds him why he came back in the first place.

This is home.


End file.
